Tears Seven times salt
by LadyNightRunner
Summary: Reno never was afraid to cry. Not when he was a child, not when he was a man, and not when he was told he couldn't.


This piece was actually written in March, the night of the 3-month anniversary with my then-girlfriend. We had an argument of sorts, and quit talking. Like the last short, emotive piece I wrote, this was composed in tears on my dorm bed, unable to sleep and trying to keep it down lest I disturb the roommate. I have recovered (no medical/mental issues this time) and found this in my journal. I thought it deserved typing up and showing to you.

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><p>When Reno was a kid, many of his mother's boyfriends- who were numerous, never around long, and all sort of the same- told him not to cry. Girls, sissies, and faggots cried. Boys didn't cry. Reno never liked the boyfriends, though, and didn't listen to them. He wasn't a crybaby by any stretch of the imagination, but when he was hurt, when he was truly terrified, when his life was on the line…he cried. He wasn't afraid of how his tears might label him, because anyone who made him cry in the first place wasn't his friend anyway, so what did their opinion matter?<p>

Reno's mother died when Reno was eleven. He didn't cry at her shoddy funeral, too shocked to do more than start blankly at the floor. Later, though, the landlord came. He took everything in the tiny apartment he deemed valuable, including band memorabilia, cheap jewelry, and Reno's virginity. Reno cried then, clawing and shrieking and trying to get free, and he cried afterwards, when he was lying in the gutter the landlord has tossed him into.

The streets were hard on a child. Reno was quick to adapt, and it helped that he was beautiful, all pale china skin and huge blue eyes and such pretty hair oh please lady I can't find my momma she was just inside there and now she's gone and I don't know whatta do and then her purse was in his hands and he was gone. Gangs used him for bait, for the easy marks that didn't carry the very high possibility of being shot or stabbed or arrested. He went with them, crying on command, summoning up storms of false tears that were so, so real to the people he used them on.

At night, however, he had nightmares about the morning the landlord had come for him, and he woke with tears soaking his pillow, some thug demanding he shut up before someone was forced to wring his scrawny neck. He learned to come up fighting, a sob tight in his throat, and quickly earned himself enough respect to be able to cry himself back to sleep without interruption.

Quitting the drugs was probably the worst decision Reno ever made as far as the accompanying pain went- and considering that later in life he decided that jumping out of a window several stories up into a dumpster was a good idea, that was saying something. His 'friends' abandoned him. His fellow thugs left him in an alley to die. His own body rejected him, convulsing and heaving and burning him out. Lying in a heap of garbage, body mostly naked and covered in blood from where he had clawed his own skin to shreds, he sobbed desperately, fat tears tinted with Mako oozing down his face and burning his tongue. He begged the underside of the Plate for relief. When it came, he vomited fluorescent slime onto the shiny black shoes it wore and cried until gentle hands brought blessed blackness.

The first girlfriend Reno ever had dumped him at the end of three months, running off with a SOLDIER hopeful who didn't know how to curse in every known language or how to fold himself into impossibly tight spaces or how to flip pancakes with just a flick of his wrist. What he did know was how to fuck like a pile driver. Reno wound up sitting in the darkest corner of a seedy bar with silent tears running down his face and dripping into his beer. He could never remember if they had stopped before he passed out.

When ShinRa fell, Reno was sure his life was over. All he had had to live for was gone. Screaming, he flung himself into the ruins, taking feet and fists and gun and mag-rod to the rubble until the weapons were destroyed and he was bleeding. Voice too shot to scream any longer, he collapsed into a puddle of congealing Mako, heedless of a burns it left on him, and cried with great, choked, heaving sobs. There were no tears, only the gradual fading of his voice.

Tseng was an accident. Reno crushed on him like he had on many others, expecting a good fuck and nothing else when they finally did something together other than kill. He quickly learned that Tseng did not just fuck and leave. Lying under him, Reno found himself overwhelmed by the safety he felt, even in a position in which he gave himself completely to another and was so open for attack it was laughable. Every slow, agonizingly smooth thrust was accompanied by a sweet kiss, warm and gentle on his lips. The grey eyes staring into his were dark with passion, something he was familiar with, but warm and loving as well, things no one had offered him since he was very small. The arms around him were strong. He was safe. Reno cried, quietly and without shame, until he and Tseng were spent. Then Tseng kissed his tears away and helped him as they slept, and Reno was not afraid of his dreams.


End file.
